Reinventing Sunny Leone: From a porn star to a Bollywood Star!

While, Steven Daigle, a Big Brother (USA, 2008) reality show contestant encashed his popularity by featuring in gay porns, it was almost opposite for the established Canadian-Indian porn star Sunny Leone, who after a decade long career in porn industry accepted to appear as a contestant in the Indian Big Brother version, known as Bigg Boss (Season 5, 2011). Born to Punjabi Sikh parents, Karenjit Kaur Vohra took on the screen name Sunny Leone as she entered the porn industry. It was during her stint in Bigg Boss, a well-known Bollywood director/producer Mahesh Bhatt, (in a well set up manner for live television) went especially inside the Bigg Boss house to offer her a lead role in his film – Jism 2/Body 2 (an erotic thriller). Jism 2 faced much anger and criticism from all the corners in India for featuring a porn star, nevertheless, it earned moderate success, thus paving the way for Leone to feature in many such movies. Almost all the internet search engines since 2011 has ranked Sunny Leone among the top search keywords from India. Each controversy and negative remarks against Leone helped her to strengthen her image as a seductress/femme fatale. Moving from a porn background and taking on to the new found success as a Bollywood star meant, much needed to be changed for Sunny Leone. The article will delve into the reinvention of Leone from a porn star to a Bollywood star. It will seek to address questions such as, what makes Leone popular in India? Does Leone challenge the implicit taboos imposed by the conservative society or she operates in a surreptitious manner? Has Bollywood tamed Leone or has it exploited her sexuality for its own benefit?